My arms feel like limp spaghetti noodles. I do an exercise boot camp at 5:30 in the morning. It's really hard to get up at 4:40 am everyday (and most days it takes a lot of convincing myself to get out of bed) but I always feel better and have more energy AFTERWARDS. Today (Halloween) we needed to bring a pumpkin to work out with--think medicine ball. Well of course, I had to decorate mine with paper since we were restricted to not carve out the inside--it would make it too light! This is my favorite bird from our Migration of Junk Mail exhibition and I thought he was such a nice complementary color for the pumpkin so the whole scheme was driven by him. I like decorating pumpkins but I hardly ever do it so I'm glad I had a reason to do it. Here's what I learned about decorating pumpkins this go around:
- Pumpkin surfaces are too uneven to use rubber stamps cleanly
- Stickles work great (even tho the pumpkins are a little waxy) and make them sparkly!
- Handmade paper glued on with PVA lays on nicely
- To double make sure the paper circles didn't pop up, I used a matte gel medium over them
- Most pumpkins don't need so much reinforcing unless you are using them as a medicine ball--the stickles even stayed on with all the handling!
- It is hard to figure out how to attach a bird to a pumpkin that you'll be using as a medicine ball. (Especially at 11 pm the night before) Gary used some sort of long eye screw that was open on one side to go around the bird's leg and into the pumpkin stem
- Weigh the pumpkin in advance next time before using as a medicine ball--11 pounds feels like 800 lbs after lifting it above your head 50 times while doing squats. 3 lbs sounds like a better number!
